Distribution Automatique

Monday, July 11

Process and Object

"It somehow worries us that the thoughtin a sentence is not wholly presentat any one moment. We regard it as an object which we are making and havenever got all there, for no sooner doesone part appear than another vanishes."

from *Zettel* by Ludwig WittgensteinUniversity of California Press, 1967

Wittgenstein was fascinated by Freudand much has been written about thedifferences between the two theorists.Again and again, W seems to be on theverge of embracing the developmentalaspect of psychoanalytic thinking; thenhe ever more staunchly returns to the behavioristic model.

As W acknowledges above, anyonefascinated with the process aspect of thinkingand experience comes to question the behavioristicapproach with chooses to focus onobject over subject. But the two areinevitably intertwined.

There is a longing in Wittgenstein fora clear-cut distinction between whatis correct and what is incorrect, amathematician's understandableyearning for answers. Pyschoanalysis shows thatthe rational element in experience isnever permanently distinguishablefrom the irrational element, thoughmental health depends on a continual effort to distinguish them,especially in times of conflict.

Both Wittgenstein and Freudwere drawn to literary insightsand examples. Both recognizedthe irrational element in poetryand art, but each in their ownway were driven to discover methods enabling their work to countertheir, you might say, literarytendencies, with logic and science.But an argument could be madethat their most durable contributionsremain essentially literary.It appears now that one of Freud'senduring contributions was totranspose literary methods, processesand insights into a form of psychologicaltherapy he called psychoanalysis. Although he acknowledged that the poetspreceded him, he grounded his psychoanalysticsystem and organization on scientific models.Wittgenstein also likened his philosophical workto a kind of therapy, applicable, he said, to"philosophical cramps."

Again and again attempts on thepart of philosophers, such as Wittgensteinand Freud to incorporate and submerge the successesof literary processes and contributions to cultureinto an overarching systemof cultural interventionhave faded in time. What does appear to happen is thatthe literary domain grows everlarger and more complex. Freudhelped to bring literary thinking into the psychiatric domain; Wittgenstein,like Derrida, helped to return itsenergies and powers into the philosophical/scientificsphere.

Repeatedly, and cyclically,the literary strain in cultureturns around and absorbsand encompasses such lasting,powerful contributionshelping to insure their permanency.Nietzche is certainly anotherstriking example of such an effort;Derrida another. In other words,philosophy and psychology'scultural territory expands; onlyto be absorbed, historically,into the annals of literature.Might this be partly because theliterary river continually gainsin momentum over time dueto its essentially individualistic international, and time-defying character?

Of course, during fascist eraslike ours, this ultimate culturalsupremacy appears eclipsedby the warlike character ofthe ruling classes.Yet everyonesuspects the pen is mightierthan the sword- and systems-but sadly, it appears, only in the long run.*******************************The Emperor of Ice Cream: What Does It All Mean?